A Common Disaster
by bj
Summary: Found myself a friend but he's crooked as a stick in water. EphramOther. Consciousverse. PG13 for language.


it's: a common disaster  
by: bj  
in sum: i found myself a friend but he's crooked as a stick in water.  
label: ephram. ephram/other. implied: ephram/amy, ephram/colin.  
rating: pg13. language, my friends.  
sissies: it's futurefic. so.  
legalities: don't own, don't sue.  
i say: a last grasp at the life worth living. before "long way down." for rm, by request.  
muse: "a common disaster" by cowboy junkies. album: lay it down. "a tattoo burned for everything i ever wanted and lost." jared padalecki's lovely reinvention of wb floppy-hair.  
you say: all comments appreciated, answered, and archived. allcanadiangirl@lycos.com.  
  
  
**a common disaster**  
  
Ephram is on his back and something--someone, he hopes--is gently pushing his limp dick into his boxers. Zipping him up, the sound oddly final, oddly comforting. Ephram opens his eyes.  
  
Wherever he is, it's dark. Not totally, pitch, subterranean, end-of-the-world black, but dark. If he could lift his hand, he'd definitely be able to see it. He can see a square glass light fixture hanging from the ceiling. He wonders why he can't lift his hand.  
  
Something--somebody, he realises--lands next to him. The thing he's laying on is soft, he figures it's probably a bed. The person is breathing and close, he feels skin pressing not quite against his arm, and warm. And moving. The skin rubs his arm and is gone.  
  
A crinkling sound. Ephram blinks, turns his head, blinks some more. The person is--holy fuck, what the fuck have I done now, he thinks--the person is obviously a guy, a guy with this dark hair, the room is still dark but Ephram's adjusting slowly, this hair that's falling over his forehead and over his ears. He's lying back, and his face is intent.  
  
He's trying to open something, Ephram sees. He's got his hands up, close to his face, bottom lip between his teeth, a small thing in his fingers, he's trying to open this little plastic pouch.  
  
A mint. Ephram blinks slowly. He's trying to get himself a breath mint.  
  
A hand intercepts the guy's hands--my hand, Ephram thinks, just glad he can move--and takes the package.  
  
The guy looks over. There must be some light somewhere because his eyes are kind of glittering, Ephram recognises that, he's seen it before, eyes shining in the dark. Ephram looks at the pocket of plastic and rips it open without fumbling. His hands are not shaking.  
  
Something small lands on his chest--he's not wearing a shirt, okay, where's my shirt--and he picks it up. A small round mint, white, the kind you get in restaurants, on the tray with the cheque. Another odd comfort, between his thumb and index finger, a restaurant mint.  
  
He looks at the guy again, swallows hard, his throat is very very dry. Ephram holds the mint close to him, close to his face, so the guy can see it, can take it from him.  
  
The guy moves his head forward, parts his lips, his teeth. His tongue is very soft, very warm, on the tips of Ephram's thumb and forefinger. Ephram lets the mint go, and the guy leans back again, away. Lips pursed, sucking. The. Mint.  
  
Oh fuck, Ephram thinks, oh holy fucking fuck. The saliva on his skin feels thick, heavy, and he can't break away from these two glittering eyes. He licks his thumb, his finger, tastes like spit and maybe a little salt.  
  
The guy smiles a little, lips closed. Then he looks away, turns his head, looks up at the ceiling. Ephram can see his jaw working the mint, can see it stop between his back teeth.  
  
The guy's mouth opens, he blinks slowly. "Brad," he says, and Ephram thinks he can smell the mint on his breath.  
  
Someone says, "What?"  
  
After a second, he realises it was him, his voice seems both overused and new. Like being thirteen all over again.  
  
The mint clicks against the guy's teeth a few times. Once, twice, three times. "Before," he says. "On the way here. You asked me my name."  
  
Ephram swallows. His throat is not so dry now. "Brad."  
  
"You too?" the guy says, and laughs a little bit. Then the clicking again.  
  
Ephram doesn't get it, then. Then he does. His face feels very warm and he's glad the room is dark. "No. I'm, um--"  
  
The guy--Brad, fucker, his name is Brad--shakes his head. "Ephram. I know, man. You were wearing a nametag."  
  
The store. Late night stocking, first of the month, and Emily said _fuck 'em my cousin's having a party_ and he blew off pizza night and he didn't call because he was so fucking tired of Colin talking about college and Amy talking about Colin and all of them talking and talking. And there was, whatever, drinking and smoking and stuff. And obviously, there was a guy.  
  
Brad--the guy, Brad--sits up, slides away from Ephram, out of his line of sight. Ephram stays on his back, not sure if he can sit up, wondering what the hell was in that joint because, fuck. He can't even remember how he got here. Wherever here is.  
  
He's absolutely fucking lost and. And it's not. It's not an entirely unpleasant feeling.  
  
But he puts that down to the fact that he's still a little wasted and he just--oh fuck--he just got a blowjob from a complete and utter stranger. A guy.  
  
Faint light, golden light, snaps on in the corner of the ceiling. A lamp, Ephram thinks. These are solid objects. He turns his head, sees a curtained window, a night table, a Dandy Warhols poster. Definitely a bedroom.  
  
Slowly, an ache in the back of his throat--not going to fucking cry, he thinks-he levers himself up, rests on his elbows, and there's the guy again--Brad again, stripping off his red t-shirt and pulling on a blue plaid button-down. He's standing in front of a dresser, only a few feet away.  
  
There's a mirror. There's a mirror on top of the dresser. He can see Brad's back in it, and he can see his own pale, narrow chest, his own drawn face, his own pink eyes. The green at his hairline from the dye job before commencement on Wednesday, made Amy purse her lips and roll her eyes, say something about growing up, gesture to Colin's unadulterated black mop. Made Colin smile. Lighten up, Grover, he said. It matches his eyes.  
  
Something flutters in front of the mirror and he snaps away, eyes to Brad's. He's holding up a--shirt. A black t-shirt with cracked white lettering, reads Nextmode Comics & Music: not trying to cause a big sensation. Gold-tone nametag hanging forlornly, reads EPHRAM.  
  
"Dude? You want this?" Brad asks, eyebrows raised.  
  
Yeah, Ephram says, but he doesn't really, his mouth moves but nothing comes out. He swallows; his throat is thick with saliva. "Yeah."  
  
Brad steps closer, fumbles with the shirt, finally gets his hands hooked in the collar. He leans close to Ephram, slides the shirt over his head. Ephram sits up, starts to say he's fine, he can do it himself. But Brad's got his right hand, lifting it, gently fitting it through the sleeve of his shirt, and then again on the left side.  
  
Ephram finds his legs are hanging over the edge of the bed. Weird he didn't notice that before. Brad crouches in front of him, his shirt unbuttoned, black lines moving across his chest. Brad has a tattoo on his chest. Fuck. He looks concerned.  
  
"You okay?" he asks, one hand still on Ephram's shoulder.  
  
Ephram tugs his shirt down over his abdomen. "Yeah. I just." He laughs, no idea where the sound comes from. "I don't know where I am."  
  
"Yeah." Brad nods. "You were pretty wasted, man."  
  
That'll be it, Ephram tells himself. You were pretty wasted, and that's why you woke up on the tail end of a blowjob from a guy--Jesus, Jesus, a guy. Ephram nods. He's not entirely sure of the etiquette in this situation, if there is any at all, it's just. Time. Time to get out. "Um," he says. Brilliant.  
  
Brad's hand moves to his neck, his forehead wrinkles. "It's my apartment," he says. "You're in my apartment. We drove from Pat's place--"  
  
"Who--"  
  
"Right, you came with Emily." Brad's fingers move slowly over the knots of his vertebrae, pressing between them. "Pat is Emily's cousin, the guy in the pink wig and stilettos."  
  
Ephram nods, remembers that, the shock of seeing people like this-people he hung around with regularly in New York, but this is Denver--is he still in Denver? "Yeah."  
  
"We drove up here from Pat's place." Brad's fingers have moved through the short hairs on the back of his head and he thinks suddenly of the way Amy held him to her when they kissed.  
  
He makes some sort of noise and moves away, accidentally kicks the guy as he stumbles off the bed and--fuck, that'd better be a door, he thinks, that'd better not be a fucking closet because no, fuck no, I'm not good with metaphors.  
  
The handle turns slick in his hand, easily around, and he's in a hallway--thank you--he's standing in a dark hallway with no clue where to go next.  
  
"You're going to need your keys, man."  
  
He leans one hand on the wall, leans over until his head is resting on, what. He looks, sees Jakob Dylan's crooked nose and ironic eyes. Another poster. He lets his knees go, lets himself slide to the floor.  
  
He feels Brad's warmth beside him, close beside, down. Ephram shakes his head. "Don't touch me," he says, but it's really more of a plea.  
  
"Okay," Brad says. Confused.  
  
"I." Ephram doesn't know what he's trying to say, but obviously he's got something. "I'm not gay," he says. Kind of desperate and he doesn't like it when his voice sounds so panicked.  
  
"I know," Brad says. "You told me at the party. It's okay."  
  
Slowly, gently, Brad picks up Ephram's hand and presses his keys into it, closes his fingers around them. Sharp metal and smooth plastic--Old Springs Music School, PCH Grad 2005, a stick of Lucite with a peso embedded in it. Brad puts Ephram's hand back on his thigh and moves away, sitting against the opposite wall.  
  
Ephram squeezes his keys. "You think I'm good to drive?" he asks, trying to laugh.  
  
Brad doesn't smile. "It's not that far. An hour, maybe."  
  
Where the fuck? "Where are we?"  
  
"Old Springs."  
  
Sure. Right. "Okay."  
  
"I mean." Brad looks away, back into his bedroom. "You could stay here, but you've got exams and shit, right."  
  
Tomorrow is. Fuck. Tomorrow is Friday. "No," he says, feeling strangled. "Classes are over. I'm, I'm done."  
  
But Friday is Prom Day and fuck. How can he see him when I stood her up, when I stood them up to party with some girl from work and fuck around with a--  
  
"Well," Brad says. "If you want to sleep or whatever." He folds and re-folds his hands over his bent knees, the cuffs of his shirt unbuttoned and gaping, the black lines of his tattoo bleeding across his chest, only a little darker than the darkness. "You can stay."  
  
A guy.  
  
The hallway cuts off around a corner a few feet away, and there is pale orange-tinted light filtering from that direction. The buttery yellow lamplight from the bedroom only touches Brad's ear, cheekbone, his arm and his leg, shadows carved into skin and denim.  
  
It's okay, he thinks. And he thinks it's probably not at all fair that he doesn't remember his first blowjob. And. And Brad has a tattoo.  
  
Ephram would like. Ephram would like to see it, so he leans across the hallway, keys dropping to the carpet. He reaches forward, slips a hand under the light fabric, moves it out of the way.  
  
Dry and warm, like a fresh bagel--what the fuck? bagels?--and this close he can see the lines make something, it doesn't make any sense. Four, four characters set on the left side of Brad's chest. He moves a bitten nail along a curving corner like an incision. Horimono, shisei, irezumi, he thinks. Bokukei.  
  
Brad swallows. "You're staying?"  
  
Ephram watches Brad's nipple harden. Jesus. "I."  
  
His hand opens, spreads over Brad's skin, covering the tattoo. And this is something, he thinks, this is really fucking something.  
  
He's leaning up, inward. Brad closes his eyes before Ephram gets there, before Ephram gets close enough to kiss him. But it's pretty obvious, anyway, what he's in the hallway for.  
  
I'm totally fucking wasted, he says to himself. I'm really not good to drive.  
  
Then he is moving into Brad's mouth and it's totally the same, it's just the same, except Brad doesn't taste like Berry Bomb lip gloss or crantini coolers. He tastes like. Peppermint and spit.  
  
He feels like warm black ink, bleeding through Ephram's fingers, through Ephram's lips. Ephram leans between Brad's thighs, their hands moving, a hand on his hip, under his arm and up over his shoulder, an arm around Brad's neck, a hand on warm warm smooth skin, just there. Doing something.  
  
Fuck. It's just a mouth, right.  
  
  
End.  
  



End file.
